Steve Olson

Steve Olson

@steveolson.bsky.social

Humble ad guy. potato influencer. whiskey & cephalopod obsessed. expat minnesotan. Learning about wine, to play banjo, and to be a bonsai... uh... keeper? Sportsball: Vikings, Tottenham, Bath Rugby.

1.9K followers652 following5.9K posts

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Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

Damn, "Hurricane Season" was dark.. A perfect book to kick off the 2025 Reading Season. I did struggle with how to feel about it, but reading @jcljules.bsky.social's 2020 review citing Marlon James' quote about the need to risk "pornography" in describing the impacts of violence helped. #booksky

Steve Olson reposted

mtsw
@mtsw.bsky.social

It turns out punishing coup plotters actually is an effective deterrent!

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Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

The combination of racism and stupidity is so incredibly toxic to our national discourse.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

Steve Olson reposted

Matt Ortega
@mattortega.com

The way you stop these people is you put the fear of God into them.

Matthew Hay Brown@matthewhaybrown.bsky.social

“Flávio has given up,” a Bolsonaro family adviser told The Washington Post. “He’s terrified. He is worried his father will die in jail, that he himself will be jailed this week, and that he may have a long prison term ahead”

washingtonpost.comBolsonaro effectively concedes in Brazil after Trump suggests he won’t helpTrump says the presidential election looked “rigged” but did not say he planned to intervene on behalf of the right-wing politician.
Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

Was literally reading this weekend about how unscrupulous dog owners are held liable when their sentient, actual living creatures with independent minds attack other dogs or humans. Seems like AI should follow those precedents.

Lindsay Beyerstein@beyerstein.bsky.social

Rewrite every headline about an AI doing something illegal as the owners of the AI doing something illegal. Strict liability could end this madness.

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

If the seahawks keep this up I am going to be SOOOOOOOOOOOO insufferable for the next week… #skol

Steve Olson@steveolson.bsky.social

Alright Seahawks, imma need you to win so my beloved Vikings will be the last remaining undefeated team in the league, despite being the fraudiest undefeated NFL team in recent memory. #skol

Steve Olson reposted

Kate Starbird
@katestarbird.bsky.social

This drives me CRAZY. I grew up playing sports w/ boys. I played on a U12 boys select soccer team, b4 switching to a U12 girls team that kept beating us. Nobody had any issue with any of it. Youth sports have never had the strict sex/gender boundaries that “XX-XY” activists are now trying to defend.

Andrew D Thaler@drandrewthaler.bsky.social

I live in a rural town and, like, I don't know how to tell you this, but the girls play on the boys team and vice versa all the time because otherwise we don't have enough players for a game and it's literally always fine so stop being weirdos about kids sports and just let trans kids play.

Steve Olson reposted

George Potter 🔶
@georgepotter.bsky.social

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

Alright Seahawks, imma need you to win so my beloved Vikings will be the last remaining undefeated team in the league, despite being the fraudiest undefeated NFL team in recent memory. #skol

Steve Olson reposted

Phil Lewis
@phillewis.bsky.social

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic has conceded defeat to a student-led movement in a seismic political shift.

Steve Olson reposted

Laura Bassett
@lebassett.bsky.social

Bolsonaro-friendly mayors appear to be sabotaging public transport on Election Day. Buses aren’t running in Lula-friendly areas, flights and ferries mysteriously canceled. Traffic lights have gone out and people’s power cut in Salvador, indigenous people’s travel restricted

Rafa Sales Ross@rafiews.com

We are watching a coup d’état attempt unfold in real time in Brazil. I’m consumed by desperation.

Steve Olson reposted

Lindsay Beyerstein
@beyerstein.bsky.social

Why should we believe the guy who lied about not doing this?

Lora Kolodny@lorak.bsky.social

Musk said he restricted Starlink in Ukraine- causing fast moving drones to lose connectivity - and that he had every right to do so because of some terms of service or contract that he didn't show us. (He didn't address suddenly doing this with no warning to Kyiv.) www.cnbc.com/2026/10/24/u...

cnbc.comAfter SpaceX restores high-speed service, Musk claims Ukraine violated Starlink agreementUkraine says restrictions on Starlink and Starshield have been lifted, restoring connectivity to fast-moving military systems after disruptions.

Steve Olson reposted

Sen. Adam Schiff
@schiff.senate.gov

ICE said Antonio Moreida jumped onto the hood of their vehicle. Now a local police investigation concludes that an ICE agent struck him with his SUV. The routine lying by ICE is the result of the example set by leadership of the Department of Homeland Security.

sacbee.comPolice dispute ICE’s account of Woodland collision: ‘Inconsistent’ with videoWoodland police said video evidence contradicted ICE’s claims that man jumped onto an agent’s SUV.

Steve Olson reposted

Robert Cruickshank
@robertcruickshank.com

This whole thread but especially this:

Elana Levin@levin.bsky.social

At some point In the 90s people decided that only math and tech skills matter. The ability to interpret text? Communicate convincingly? Be creative? That’s gay. Only math is manly, lucrative and valid. So I’m not surprised if the rage bait works. Everyone’s still traumatized from school grades.

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

musk, directly to camera:

Andrew Lawrence@ndrew.bsky.social

if you ever write an article about a guy saying hes done with politics and then a month or so later hes making the largest political donation in history then you need to quit and find another line of work

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

Yeah, well Hunter Biden was underqualified for that one job thanks to his dad.

Chris Hayes@chrislhayes.bsky.social

This is one of the most holy sh*t stories I’ve ever read in my life. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

vanityfair.comThe Art of the Deal: Jared Kushner’s Hacked Phone Revealed More Than $700 Million in TransfersAn exclusive excerpt from ‘Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East’ examines how bank accounts linked the president’s son-in-law—and former sen...
Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

FWIW, aside from occasional graphics, bonsai as a hobby has been relatively safe from AI as far as i can tell. But, probably one of the few hobbies left untouched these days…

Aftermath@aftermath.site

Every single hobby I love has has been infected by slopped up and unserious software. It's exhausting. aftermath.site/ai-slop-hobbie...

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

Can confirm.

The New Yorker@newyorker.com

Apple TV is home to “Severance” and “Ted Lasso.” But our critic thinks this underrated program is the streaming site’s best offering by a mile. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...

Steve Olson reposted

Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner.bsky.social

BREAKING: Citing noncompliance concerns and highlighting problems with the declaration submitted Monday, Judge Hinderaker orders *daily* reports that include a declaration from someone with "personal involvement" in effectuating the court's order to facilitate a deported gay man's return to the US.

Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social

BREAKING: Lawyers raise questions of whether the Trump administration is in noncompliance with an October 6 court order to facilitate the return of a gay man from Egypt who the administration sent to Equatorial Guinea.

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

i am not going to bother watching or reading “Whalefall” but can someone spoil it for me and let me know if the whale is ok at the end? 📽️

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

The Teapot Dome scandal, which 100 years later, every kid reads about in school as the most rank corruption, was over roughly $11M in bribes (in 2025 dollars) to then-Secretary of the Interior Albert fall,

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social

My brain cannot process this level of corruption. She was being paid $50 million to engineer a pardon from Trump *while working at the Justice Department* as a "Special Government Employee." And it worked. He got the pardon, and she got the money. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/u...

nytimes.comA Billionaire Wanted a Trump Pardon. His Family Gave Alina Habba a $50 Million Deal. (Gift Article)Julio Herrera Velutini, a prominent Venezuelan, was seeking clemency. He got it not long after his daughter gave Ms. Habba, a lawyer close to President Trump, an extraordinarily lucrative job.
Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

Support the Troops, but only if you vote for us.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump on Camp Lejeune water contamination claims: "If we win the House and Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible ... if we don't win, there's no money."

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

<insert two nickels joke>

Garth@thedalaicomma.bsky.social

So this is two weeks in a row that Ramaswamy's big ad has starred someone who's defended and/or justified the actions of a pedophile. Interesting campaign strategy.

Steve Olson
@steveolson.bsky.social

Well, they got the viral moment they paid for, just kinda not in the way they'd hoped.

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social

Huge follow-up reporting to my scoop: The Guardian confirmed America Next—the conservative nonprofit founded by Bobby Jindal that was offering students $ to disrupt El-Sayed events—paid a firm registered to Tommy Teepell’s dad Timmy $250k for “canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed.

theguardian.comMichigan heckler the son of Republican adviser paid for ‘influencer marketing’ against El-SayedTimmy Teepell’s firm paid $250,000 by America Next, which has been trying to gin up ‘organic’ opposition to El-Sayed